Review: The Never-Ending End of the World

 


This is such a clever premise for a book. It’s entirely different from any dystopian/apocalypse story I’ve ever seen, and it manages to be surprisingly horrifying in a way that lets it compete with any zombie apocalypse. That being said, the execution was a bit odd. There wasn’t as much tension as it felt like the story warranted? The stakes were clearly high, and a fascinating sort of political intrigue gets laid out across the book, but the actual tension was missing for me for a lot of the book. In the scenes where it worked, it really worked, but so many crucial moments got told in the form of a diary entry that a lot of the tension and drama got lost. Also, the story spanned a really long time. Which is fine because it gave it a very unique structure and, I think, allowed a story of parenthood and what we owe the world to be told that would be really challenging to tell if it didn’t span a lifetime. Unfortunately, it also meant that a lot of relationships sort of got pushed to the side because they got told, not shown. For instance, it felt like Coco and Jorge’s relationship just sort of got thrown in as an aside by Coco, but never really played out. And none of the side characters were really distinct in any way or given any page time. So this was a perfectly decent book with a really cool premise, but I think the structure needed to be tightened up a little.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Heartless Hunter

Image
  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It’s a fairly traditional enemies-to-lovers setup, and there’s not anything super out of the box, but I was shocked by how invested I got in Rune and Gideon’s relationship (I know – JAY getting invested in STRAIGHT PEOPLE?). There were also a few elements that I particularly enjoyed.  First, despite this being a YA romantasy, there’s actually a shocking amount of complexity and nuance that gets conveyed. We’re introduced to a world in which witches are brutally hunted and executed, which of course sets the reader up to side with Rune, the witch in hiding. But as the book goes on, it becomes very clear that the revolution that overthrew the witches was very much justified. The story does a really good job of showing the ways that privilege can change rapidly and how people can be talking about two entirely different things without even realizing it when it comes to power dynamics. Spoilers on this one! Another thing I thought this
Read more

Review: Cleat Cute

Image
  So I’ve seen a lot of stuff pitching this as lesbian Ted Lasso, and alas, it simply is not. The side characters are charming enough, but they lack the brilliance of the Ted Lasso ensemble and aren’t given much attention throughout the book. Grace and Phoebe are very much the primary focus, and almost every scene revolves around them. And yeah, it is a romance, but those of you who follow my reviews will know that I firmly believe that the best romances have excellent side characters and spend time developing other relationships – not to mention, other aspects of the characters. This book is trying to touch on some of those things, but the proportions weren’t quite right for me.  For instance, one plot element is Phoebe and Grace exploring their potential neurodivergence. I didn’t realize that would be a plot point going in, and I was excited when it was, but it wasn’t explored as much as it could have been. Grace in particular is really reduced to a throwaway line about maybe looking
Read more

Review: The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay

Image
  First off, I absolutely love both the cover and the title of this book. The art is just SO GORGEOUS. Unfortunately, those were probably the most compelling elements of the book to me. The story follows three best friends in Houston and their various senior year challenges, with the sort of core being Dawn’s entry to a film competition, after which the book is named. Each of the three girls has a very distinct story, connected to the others only by virtue of their friendship, and unfortunately I think this made the pacing kind of weird. When one character was having a crucial story moment, it felt like the other storylines were just kind of dragging along for the sake of being there.  One thing I did really appreciate was how this book handled representation. It switched the stereotypical roles that the best friends would have played based on their race – the Black character was the one with strict parents who fixated on her grades, and the Asian character was the one with a fun singl
Read more